Everyone in our house is in tears, my son is telling me he wishes he had never been born and I’m fairly sure the neighbors are about to call social services. It’s our daily attempt at ten minutes (inevitably eventually reduced to about four) of piano practice. Why am I doing this? It’s particularly ironic given that my most feverish nightmares are about my mother standing behind me counting to four while beating the air with a ruler, while I remained totally mystified about why she kept starting again every time she got to four. Is it because I have to prove that I turned out so fantastically, and the only way to achieve this is to put my son through the same hell I went through? Is it some form of transferred Stockholm syndrome?
“I just really want him to get as much out of music as I have,” I weep to my husband, as he pats me sympathetically but, wise and seasoned man that he is, keeps totally silent, “I just want him to enjoy it, you know?” And everyone knows the best way to achieve enjoyment is through draconian, disciplinarian practice sessions and a commitment to the rigid uniformity of scales and arpeggios.
Wikipedia and Google answer questions with more questions, opening up pages of information you never asked for. But a dictionary builds on common knowledge, using simple words to explain more complex ones. Using one feels like prying open an oyster rather than falling down a rabbit hole.
To tell Glenn’s story—to convey his perspective on life and death, pain and purpose—is to share an uncomfortable truth: 9/11 was not the worst day of his life.
In her 10th book, “On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint,” Nelson investigates freedom as conceptualized and practiced through art, sex, drugs and the climate. Rather than attempting to resolve the essential crises of those vectors, Nelson’s essays tease out simultaneous and contradictory truths, or koans.